1. If you haven't already, set up a Node.js Development Environment by following the Node.js setup guide and create a project.

2. Create a Google Cloud SQL "SQL Server" instance. Note the instance connection name of the instance that you create, and password that you specify for the default 'sqlserver' user.

3. Under the instance's "DATABASES" tab, create a new database.

   1. Click Create database.

   2. For Database name, enter votes.

   3. Click CREATE.

4. Create a service account with the 'Cloud SQL Client' permissions by following these instructions. Download a JSON key to use to authenticate your connection.

Use the information noted in the previous steps to set the following environment variables:

export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=/path/to/service/account/key.json
export INSTANCE_CONNECTION_NAME='<MY-PROJECT>:<INSTANCE-REGION>:<INSTANCE-NAME>'
export INSTANCE_HOST='127.0.0.1'
export DB_PORT='1433'
export DB_USER='my-db-user'
export DB_PASS='my-db-pass'
export DB_NAME='my_db'

Note: Defining credentials in environment variables is convenient, but not secure. For a more secure solution, use Secret Manager to help keep secrets safe. You can then define export CLOUD_SQL_CREDENTIALS_SECRET='projects/PROJECT_ID/secrets/SECRET_ID/versions/VERSION' to reference a secret that stores your Cloud SQL database password. The sample app checks for your defined secret version. If a version is present, the app retrieves the DB_PASS from Secret Manager before it connects to Cloud SQL.

Download and install the cloud_sql_proxy by following the instructions here.

Then, use the following command to start the proxy in the background using TCP:

./cloud_sql_proxy -instances=${INSTANCE_CONNECTION_NAME}=tcp:1433 sqlserver -u ${DB_USER} --host 127.0.0.1

Next, setup install the requirements with npm:

npm install

Finally, start the application:

npm start

Navigate towards http://127.0.0.1:8080 to verify your application is running correctly.

App Engine Flexible supports connecting to your SQL Server instance through TCP

First, update app.yaml with the correct values to pass the environment variables and instance name into the runtime.

Then, make sure that the service account service-{PROJECT_NUMBER}>@gae-api-prod.google.com.iam.gserviceaccount.com has the IAM role Cloud SQL Client.

The following command will deploy the application to your Google Cloud project:

gcloud beta app deploy